NEW DELHI: Early conclusion of the stalled Doha Round of talks for achieving a global trade deal should ensure that the interest of developing and least developed countries is served, the government said today.

Differences between rich and developing nations on issues like subsidies in agriculture and fisheries, tariff cuts in industrial goods and market access for services have been a stumbling block in the conclusion of WTO's Doha talks, which started in the Qatari capital in 2001.

"India is of the view that any early outcome of the negotiations should invariably address issues of interest to the developing countries, especially the least developed countries (LDCs) and the small vulnerable economies," the Economic Survey for 2012-13 said.

It said that the Eighth Ministerial Meeting of the WTO which was held in December 2011 in Geneva provided political guidance to the members to resolve the issues involved. However, there was no significant progress in 2012.

"Efforts are being made for an early harvest on some issues in time for the Ninth Ministerial Conference (MC9) of the WTO to be held in December 2013," the Survey said.

It also said that India and most of the developing countries want issues of market access and trade facilitation to be balanced with developmental issues such as duty free quota, free market access for LDCs and acceptance of the modalities for reducing cotton subsidies.

On food security, the G33 group of countries, which is a coalition of 46 developing countries, including India, has tabled a proposal in the WTO last year which seeks for an amendment to certain provisions to allow developing countries greater flexibility in their public stock holding operations for food security purposes.

"The issue of food security is very important for India and any concession on the trade facilitation front needs to be balanced by acceptance of the G33 proposal in any package deal for MC9," it added.

Further, it said that India is also carefully examining the proposal of the developed countries on expansion of the Information Technology Agreement (ITA).

The US, European Union and Japan have proposed expansion of the ITA to increase the coverage of IT products on which customs duty would be bound at zero as well as expanding the number of signatory countries.